UACE 2018: Girls outshine boys, 1400 candidates fail

The Uganda Advanced Certificate of Educations examination results released on Thursday have indicated that girls outshone their male counterparts at all levels.

The results released by UNEB today show that the percentage of girls with three principal passes was at 42.9% compared to 33.7% for the males whereas 27.5% of the girls had two principal passes and only 27% of the boys had the same number of passes.

The results also indicated that the failure rate among the female candidates was lower at 0.8% compared to their male counterparts at 1.8%.

A total of 99,576 candidates registered for the 2018 UACE exams and 41296 of these were females.

Over 1400 candidates fail

Despite registering a better performance in the 2018 UACE exams that saw 95,839 candidates (98.6%) out of the total 98,524 who sat pass, a big number of them failed and cannot qualify to join any university.

The exams indicate that 1489 candidates which represented 1.4% of the total number of candidates failed the examinations after getting F- grade and   don’t qualify to get certificates.

The 1489 candidates cannot join any university because for one to join any institution of higher learning, they must have attained at least a subsidiary pass in a principal level subject.

The results released on Thursday indicated that 36,656 candidates passed with three passes representing 37.5% of the total candidates, 26,467(27.2%) with two passes, 20,413(21.1%) whereas 12,303(12.8%) has one subsidiary pass.

The results also indicated that History, Economics, Entrepreneurship Education, Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry and Arts  subjects had a  better performance than in 2017 whereas there was a decline in CRE, Literature in English, Agriculture and Biology than it was the previous year.

Speaking during the release of exams, UNEB chairperson, Prof.Mary Okwakol warned schools against issuing fake UACE results in a bid to appease both parents and candidates.

“It has come to the attention of the board that some head teachers issue fake examination results which they purport to be UNEB results with the intention of falsely pleasing parents. The board strongly warns those engaged in this illegality that they risk having examination centres withdrawn,” Prof.Okwakol said.

The UNEB Executive Secretary Dan Odongo applauded traditional government schools for the good performance exhibited and they beat their private counterparts.

"They were able to handle tasks that required high order skills,”Odongo said.